Before setting sail from the island, Jian Chen detained the captain of the Dutch ship and some sailors in the name of friendly exchanges. Pen~Fun~Ge www.biquge.info The Dutch ship was temporarily commanded by the first mate, and at the same time, he also sent some interns such as Wei Yuan to the Dutch ship to observe and learn their sailing skills.

The handling of the two boats is completely different, as are the lifting sails, canvases, and ropes. It takes many years to train a sufficient crew of sailors.

Money can solve a lot of problems, such as buying a boat. But money does not solve the skill of sailors and good seamen, which is a very helpless thing.

Wei Yuan looked at the ship that was completely different from the one he was familiar with, and studied with the same discipline as a trainee.

A peek at their weapons revealed that they were still mainly based on swords, and the quality of the cannons did not look very good.

The large-caliber arquebus mounted on the side of the ship was bulky, but it should be suitable for long-distance use.

If you don't understand the language, it is difficult to communicate many things, and you can only study while watching, which is very inefficient.

Lan Fang.

Chen Jian pondered the charts, asking about some of the ports, cities, and forces here.

On the chart, about 13 degrees north latitude, there is a dotted patch of small islands. To the north, said to be a Spanish colony, it is a rather large island.

This small island dotted with dots has become a place for pirates and smugglers to communicate with each other.

More than a decade ago, after the Anglo-Spanish naval battle and the magical Irish kamikaze, the Dutch seized the opportunity of the Spanish navy to flood into this sea in large numbers.

Their Anglo-French counterparts had also done a lot of great things before, and at one point they captured Spanish colonial towns and demanded ransom.

Without the Isthmus of Panama and Central America, the Spaniards had a much harder time here than they did in history.

Open seas, longer coastlines, weakened navies, royal bankruptcy on the verge of bankruptcy, and distances are too far to manage, but this is a place that has been infiltrated by smugglers and pirates. From time to time, they have to face things like pirates landing and robbing, which is not much different from the Japanese pirates encountered in the Ming Dynasty. It's just that the Ming Dynasty is a Cao Yun rather than an official sea transport, and the robbery of official ships is missing.

With the increasing number of pirates in this sea area, many pirate leaders have emancipated their minds, sought truth from facts, sought development, adjusted their structure, and guided by the supply and demand relationship of the market economy, a large number of new entrepreneurs have emerged.

He grew food, made wine, opened a shop, worked as a repairman, traded slaves, and ran a brothel...... Some pirates have completed the transition from looting to sitting on the ground, allowing the island to flourish.

Instead of anchoring at a pirate-infested island port, Jian Chen chose to dock on an uninhabited desert island, and commanded the ship's sailors to use felling wood to build improvised forts and simple wooden forts, where they were stationed.

The camp should not be too long, and if it is too long, the sailors may not be able to adapt to the soil. Even if it is disinfected with boiling water, bleaching powder, etc., it is very likely that epidemic will occur.

He wasn't afraid of the pirates here. With his current strength, ordinary pirates don't dare to target him for fear of provoking fire. He had little experience in naval warfare, mostly on paper, but if he wanted to, he could have captured a few small towns in the Spanish colonies with the trainees, sailors, and escorts on board.

After counting all the cargo and checking the promised reward for the Dutch captain, Chen Jian transferred the Purple Quartz.

The Dutch ship was seized on the island, and the Purple Quartz was loaded with the Dutch captain and 200 convoy soldiers, as well as cargo samples, and the Dutch captain was in charge of finding someone willing to take over and trade on the island.

In the process of waiting for the reply, Jian Chen walked around the island and found some traces of human existence.

But now there is no one left on the island, only the remnants of some original villages.

Chen Jian estimated that the people on the island were either killed or taken away as slaves on plantations and sugar mills.

It is estimated that the people on this island are now extinct, the average life expectancy of plantation slaves is too short, and the slaves of the sugar mill do not live very long. The animal power winch used to extract the sugar was so crude that the slightest mistake could trap the arm, and the overseer next to him took out his knife and cut off the slave's hand, and used the bucket to catch the blood that flowed out so as not to contaminate the syrup.

In the future, people from their own ethnic groups will come here to open up plantations, and it is estimated that the number of roads will be the same. If you're lucky, you'll be able to introduce a law prohibiting Chinese nationals from becoming slaves in any form.

The plantation was a labor-intensive enterprise, and it could have been avoided by forming a monopoly collective plantation farm with a strong organizational force, but his mind was not here, but it could only be thrown to the wealthy merchants and adventurers in the country.

With a shortage of labor and close proximity to Africa, the slave trade would soon become prevalent. If it is only good on these islands, I am afraid that the big estates and big farmers in China will find that it is cheaper to use slaves than hired laborers, and introduce a large number of domestic ...... There's a lot of trouble ahead.

This is another difficult battle of public opinion, and once the world is no longer alone, all kinds of strange ideas will also rise. With primary genetics and breeding as the foundation, when the theory of evolution comes out, it is estimated that racism and the like will soon appear, and the domestic ideology will have to go through at least a period of chaos for several decades.

How exactly should the colony be managed? If you make a mistake, you will probably face colonial independence in the future, and no one has any experience in these things now, and Chen Jian does not know whether he can move or influence domestic policy.

It seems that everything is good in the future, but in fact, it is a crisis step by step, especially if you go the wrong way from the beginning, the future will be too big, and it will be more difficult to change.

…………

Soon after, the Purple Quartz returned with good news.

Some ships came to the island to trade, while some pirate leaders or privateer captains came to meet the fleet commander from a mysterious country, impressed by the neat uniforms and guns of the convoy.

The people in the fleet finally met all kinds of people. Red-haired, yellow-haired, white-skinned, charcoal-covered ......

Every day there are things that will seem ordinary in the future but are eye-opening today, and only in conversation with those people do the people in the fleet know how vast the world is outside.

Chen Jian also got what he wanted, gold and silver coins, cane sugar, sugarcane seedlings, carmine dyes from various countries......

There are also several pirate leaders who have found Jian Chen, hoping to join forces with Jian Chen to make a big deal. Because Jian Chen's fleet is huge, and it seems that the sailors on those ships are also elite soldiers, they hope to cooperate with Jian Chen to plunder the Spanish fleet, or directly attack the Spanish towns to loot the ransom.

Jian Chen refused.

It's not that he's scared or guilty, it's that robbery is too low-tech, and for him and the people behind him, he prefers smuggling to robbery.

The well-developed handicraft industry of the Republic can fully meet the material living needs of the Spanish colonial people, but the evil Spanish royal government actually prevents the maritime merchants of the Republic from meeting the material living standards of the colonial people, which is obviously contrary to human rights and free trade.

Sooner or later, the pirates in this area will be exterminated, and their presence will only affect trade.

Moreover, this place is too far to the west, and his hands and feet cannot reach here in a short time, and Jian Chen does not want to have too much contact with these people. In the future, these people will be either enemies or competitors, and most of the products required by the colonies, except for slaves, will be satisfied, and they will be closer to each other.

When he returned, Chen Jian checked the chart and found an island that was the closest to Mincheng when he was about to turn north.

The island is uninhabited and will serve as a transit point for future smuggling trade.